Leveraging Futuring Techniques to Impact our Greater Socioeconomic Tapestry

Wade Westwood

ORGL 537 Foresight and Strategy

Gonzaga University

Professor Debbie Heiser

1 April 2023

Introduction

Scharmer & Kaufer (2013) identify three divides – ecological, social and spiritual-cultural – that impact humanity in the 21st century. A quick scan of social media, viewing the nightly news, or participating in a conversation at a local watering hole makes obvious the socioeconomic divides within our increasingly global social fabric. The divides described in Leading from the Emerging Future (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013) are ubiquitous in modern life to the point of being breathtaking to anyone who recognizes the disparities. 

“Awareness is not a giver of solace. It is just the opposite. It is a disturber and an awakener. The able leaders I know are all awake and reasonably disturbed. They are not seekers after solace” (Greenleaf et al., 1996, p. 323). As humanity continues to become more globally intertwined, both in terms of our economies and trade as well as our knowledge and information exchanges, leaders become more aware of the challenges, paradoxes and dichotomies of merely existing in the 21st century. As a leader’s awareness of the three divides grows, so too, grows the sense of being overwhelmed by the questions of how to change our world for the better. 

As a professional problem solver and change agent, it is frustrating to be able to so easily identify problems with the way we interact with one another, yet monumentally overwhelming to try to solve the entire problem. In a world of more than 8 billion people, how can one leader or one concerned global citizen solve the problems that are so immediately apparent, yet so ingrained in our system of being?

The Three Divides and Eight Disconnects

The ecological, social and spiritual-cultural divides are symptomatic manifestations of deeper disconnects that are imbalances produced from humanity’s current way of being. According to Scharmer & Kaufer (2013), the eight disconnects are ecological, income and wealth, financial, technology, leadership, consumerism, governance, and resource ownership. Scharmer & Kaufer (2013) treat the eight disconnects that are interwoven in our current socioeconomic tapestry as acupuncture points that can lead to transformation of how we interact with our environment, with one another and with our Self. 

My Aspirations

The three divides are too great for any one person to solve. After becoming aware of the divides and disconnects in our socioeconomics, it would be easy to say “someone ought to fix that” or to armchair quarterback other leaders’ attempts to make a difference. However, being willfully ignorant or ignoring problems is not in line with who I am as a leader. 

 If given the opportunity to consider my life in my final moments of being, I want to be able to know that I was a net benefit for humanity. It will be true that I consumed resources, that I participated in a socioeconomic structure that was not 100% fair and equitable, and certainly that I was not without sin. However, I want to be able to look back on a life of providing for my family, sharing what knowledge I have acquired, and helping people achieve more with me than they otherwise would have without me. 

To provide for my family means more than just food on the table. I yearn to be a spiritual example, an example of how a man, a husband and a father should behave, and how to help one’s neighbors and those less fortunate. To help my team members achieve means to remove obstacles when I can, but more importantly to enable and empower them to remove their own obstacles. I want my employees to learn the technical skills I have acquired, but also develop their awareness and their empathy for one another. 

The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr (1943) petitions, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference”. By focusing on what I can change, I can actualize myself from a state of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems to a state of working to understand the ecological, social, and spiritual-cultural divides and the eight underlying disconnects at a more immediate level.  

“In order to face today’s leadership challenges, many, many people in the organization – sometimes everyone – need to be involved” (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013, p. 186). Considering how the current socioeconomic divides are leadership problems at a universal level, I cannot fix the entire problem; however, I can affect change at a local level, and by teaching and developing those around me I can help put a dent in the universe toward a more balanced, less divisive socioeconomic operating model. 

How to Actualize Local Problem Solving and Enable Pathfinding-Foresight

There is a problem solving technique that we use in engineering called an Ishikawa Diagram. At the front of the diagram a problem statement is written, and by asking “why is this a problem” we can capture the reasons the problem exists. For each problem there are generally multiple answers. For each answer, we repeat the process asking, “why?”, which results in a fractal array appearing on the sheet that looks like a fish skeleton. This fishbone diagram is a powerful tool for getting to the root causes of complex problems. After the root causes are established, individual solutions can be crafted and implemented. 

Scharmer & Kaufer (2013) state that in order to fix our current divides, we must fix all three in parallel. Employing this problem solving methodology to solve why the three divides exist will yield a Ishikawa Diagram (Appendix A) with at least eight main branches that will reflect the underlying disconnects. Within those disconnect branches will lie the reasons for the disconnects existing. For a problem this complex and interwoven, there are likely thousands or even millions of system-wide root causes that must be understood and solved. “Addressing the root causes of these structural disconnects is like touching eight acupuncture points of economic and social transformation” (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013, p. 38).

This problem solving tool serves as a snapshot in time. “Pathfinding-foresight is the primary operator in the coming to know process, combining incoming and historical data with intuition, with personal integrity and resolve (purpose); foresight awareness also involves understanding organizational system well enough to strategically refine insights and ideas into practical, timely and appropriate applications” (Horsman, 2017, p.3). The Ishikawa diagram  shows what is known today about the problem, but with a problem as complex as our global socioeconomics, it is likely that a branch or a root cause of the problem goes unnoticed until some more surface-level problems are resolved. Horsman (2017) says, “nurturing the capacity for Pathfinding-foresight involves learning and practicing a generative methodology” (p. 3), and it would serve leaders well to regularly revisit the problem solving tool as problems are solved, new issues are discovered, and the socioeconomic landscape continues to evolve. 

In the remainder of this paper, I will go into further detail how I can affect change at my place of work on the income and wealth, the technology, the leadership and the consumerism disconnects. I hope to explore local solutions for the ecological, financial, governance and resource ownership disconnects in further detail throughout the remainder of this course.

The Leadership Disconnect

The first answer to why we have a leadership disconnect is summarized by Scharmer & Kaufer (2013), “we have an objective economic reality that works as a global eco-system, and then we have individuals and institutional leaders focused according to their institutional ego-system awareness. Consequently, they consider the concerns of others to be externalities” (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013, pp. 183-184). Today’s leader’s operate in their own fiefdoms, and without regard to the larger system. They are rewarded for optimizing their own departments or processes, at the expense of sub-optimizing the whole system. This problem is rampant in my organization of 90,000 employees, and can be scaled to understand the problem on a global landscape. 

To counteract this suboptimization, organizations should consider how their metrics will drive leaders’ behaviors. I am privileged to get to participate in my business unit’s annual hoshin kanri process, and this is how I can help other leaders to think systemically, rather than departmentally. “When the leader of a company works with departments that need to improve their collaboration around a common core process, that person is trying to move the departments from ego-system awareness (of their own departmental needs) to an extended stakeholder awareness (of their shared process needs across the firm)” (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013, p.85)  

The Technology Disconnect

“The wonderful appeal of the proposition that technology will fix the problem is that it sounds easy” (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013, p. 173). In my role as an engineering leader, I am witnessing an interesting phenomenon as we bring on new, freshly-graduated engineers to our organization. There is a high proclivity to seek technological solutions from the marketplace rather than engineering the solution first, and then relying on technology as a potential conduit for the solution. This form of “catalog engineering”, where one simply seeks a commercially available solution rather than thoughtfully solving the problem, has increased in prevalence with time. The problem with thinking that technology is the solution, rather than technology is a way we can implement the solution, is that we end up implementing technology for technology’s sake rather than solving the original problem. This has the unintended effect of making our systems more complicated and problem-prone. 

At a local level, I expect my engineers to first understand a problem, and then develop a countermeasure to the problem. This methodology may seem simple, but engineers tend to be innovative thinkers that gravitate to novel ideas. This leads to people first developing the solution, and then finding an appropriate problem where they can apply the solution. 

Additionally, technology costs money to develop, implement and maintain. As part of a for-profit business, our engineered solutions cannot always be to spend money to solve a problem. I teach my engineers that we must have creativity before capital investment.

The Consumerism, Income and Wealth Disconnect

The consumerism, income and wealth disconnect branches on the fishbone share the cause that we teach people to pursue money and things rather than their passions. This has lead to 1% of people in the world owning 40% of the world’s household incomes, while 50% of the world’s population own just 1% (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013). I have met many people that have impressive titles, equally impressive paychecks, and yet are not joyful. 

When mentoring people within my organization, I seek to listen to understand what their passions are. Maybe, like me, they are passionate about developing rocket motors and find deep meaning in their work. Conversely, they may just be here for the paycheck. By understanding what my employees are passionate about and what their definition of success is, I can help enable and empower them. Additionally, I can help contextualize how their work matters, because “meaning emerges from seeing one’s own connection and contribution to the whole” (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013, p. 118). By understanding and developing my employees’ passions, I am honoring their humanity and encouraging their growth not only as engineers but as people, rather than treating them as another cog in a system that earns money. 

Conclusion

“The essence of leadership is about connecting, stepping into, and acting from the field of the future that wants to emerge” (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013, p.189). Through predicting what we know to be certain about the future, generatively revisiting our teams’ paths forward and being open to refining our strategies, leaders can create positive organizational change at their immediate level which will influence the future of all humankind, as well. 

Appendix A – Ishikawa Diagram of Our Socioeconomic Divides

References:

Greenleaf, R. K., Frick, D. M., & Spears, L. C. (1996). On becoming a servant-leader. Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Horsman, J. H. (2017, March 24). ORGL 537: Foresight and Strategy. Chapter 2: Evolving Pathfinding Foresight. Gonzaga University. ORGL 537.

Niebuhr, R. (1943). Serenity Prayer [Prayer].

Scharmer, C. O., & Kaufer, K. (2013). Leading from the emerging future : from ego-system to eco-system economies. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., Cop.